This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nick Bjugstad
Arizona Coyotes Center
Six-foot-six, the 82nd percentile in top speed, and a plus-13 on two bad teams.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012-13 | FLA | 11 | 1 | 0 | 1 | -8 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 17 | 5.9 | 15:13 |
| 2013-14 | FLA | 76 | 16 | 22 | 38 | -14 | 16 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 185 | 8.6 | 16:13 |
| 2014-15 | FLA | 72 | 24 | 19 | 43 | -7 | 38 | 7 | 0 | 3 | 207 | 11.6 | 16:35 |
| 2015-16 | FLA | 67 | 15 | 19 | 34 | -8 | 41 | 6 | 0 | 3 | 171 | 8.8 | 15:31 |
| 2016-17 | FLA | 54 | 7 | 7 | 14 | -19 | 22 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 91 | 7.7 | 13:09 |
| 2017-18 | FLA | 82 | 19 | 30 | 49 | +5 | 41 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 230 | 8.3 | 15:07 |
| 2018-19 | FLA/PIT | 64 | 14 | 12 | 26 | +6 | 30 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 154 | 9.1 | 15:08 |
| 2019-20 | PIT | 13 | 1 | 1 | 2 | +3 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 18 | 5.6 | 12:14 |
| 2020-21 | MIN | 44 | 6 | 11 | 17 | +7 | 17 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 78 | 7.7 | 11:49 |
| 2021-22 | MIN | 57 | 7 | 6 | 13 | -2 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 81 | 8.6 | 10:16 |
| 2022-23 | ARI/EDM | 78 | 17 | 12 | 29 | +13 | 34 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 145 | 11.7 | 16:12 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 618 | 127 | 139 | 266 | -24 | 269 | 19 | 2 | 18 | 1377 | 9.2 | 14:41 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
17 goals and 12 assists in 78 games split between Arizona and Edmonton — 29 points at 16:12 a night, plus-13, on 145 shots, converting at 11.72 per cent, and 34 penalty minutes.
49 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,023 minutes, the 43rd percentile. His ice went 43-33 against an expectation of 39.98-41.62 — nine fewer goals conceded than the chances predicted, which is the largest defensive overperformance on the roster and is mostly the goaltending behind him after the trade.
The Finesse Game
145 attempts at a median of 21 feet with 47 per cent from inside 20, off a 93.7 mph shot at the 69th percentile.
He shoots from close and he shoots hard, which is a rarer combination than it sounds. 127 goals in 618 games is a useful third-line rate, and the 12 assists say what everybody already knows: the puck arrives at him and stops.
The Physical Game
6-6 and 210, and the surprise is the skating — 22.9 mph at the 82nd percentile with 1.7 bursts over twenty a game at the 78th. Very few men that tall move like that, and it is why he has had a twelve-year career from a body that usually produces a fourth-liner.
He is not a punishing hitter for the size — 269 penalty minutes in 618 games — but he is impossible to move off a puck and he screens a goaltender simply by standing where he is told.
The Intangibles
Nineteenth overall in 2010 to Florida, eleven seasons and five clubs, and a career that has been a series of one-year proofs that he can still play.
He is 31 and back for a second stint here. A big, fast, defensively sound third-line centre who takes faceoffs and kills penalties is exactly what contenders shop for in March, and Arizona signed him knowing that.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
- durable· was available
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“he is impossible to move off a puck and he screens a goaltender simply by standing where he is told”
“he is impossible to move off a puck and he screens a goaltender simply by standing where he is told”
“the 12 assists say what everybody already knows: the puck arrives at him and stops”
“A big, fast, defensively sound third-line centre who takes faceoffs and kills penalties is exactly what contenders shop for in March”
“A big, fast, defensively sound third-line centre who takes faceoffs and kills penalties is exactly what contenders shop for in March”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,023 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49%
- 43rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 47%
- 30th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 43 for, 33 against. Expected: 40.0 and 41.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 18 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.
Both bars are percentiles among the 58 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 63 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Usual linemates
2022-23 · 806 minutes at five-on-five
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2022-23
- The club
- EDM took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.0% — 4.5 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 1,023 minutes at five-on-five — 61st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lawson Crouse | 51.5% | 46.3% | 45.5% |
| Matias Maccelli | 51.4% | 47.6% | 47.6% |
| J.J. Moser | 50.0% | 48.6% | 43.7% |
51.5% together, 46.3% for him apart and 45.5% for Crouse apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
213 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 20 of them goals. His median goal came from 9 feet. 47% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.